When Drama and Conflict Make Social Justice Teaching Unpredictable

• In Event: 72.064 - Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 72.064-6 - Qualitative Studies on Justice, Teaching, and Research in the Elementary School

Abstract

This paper addresses the possibilities and challenges of using drama and conflict pedagogies to teach for social justice. Drawing upon data from three social justice oriented elementary school classrooms, I highlight what happened when students interpreted and acted in unpredictable and conflictual ways in response to teachers’ social justice education approaches. Marshaling post-structural theories, I analyze instances of how students mediated and reframed teacher intentions. I propose that students exhibited engagement and agency through laughter, silence, and explicit conflict with each other. I argue that such instances of agency challenged singular understandings of what it means to do social justice education in elementary classrooms, ultimately proposing that unpredictability and conflict be valued components of any attempt at social justice education.

Author

• Antonino Giambrone, York University